I don't recall whether I posted anything about the reading assignment, "A Brief Mythology of Petroleum."  So I'm making a point of doing ti now.  And I'll start by saying what a remarkable piece of work!  The research for this was simply brilliant. 

Everybody complains about our reliance on petroleum, but there's something about seeing the complaints framed through a mythological lens that helps me connect with the problem at an archetypal level I don't access otherwise. 

Comparing Rockefeller to Pluto was simply chilling (and the images really helped "sell" the connection).  The etymological amplification really drove home the symbolic language that lies behind the petroleum industry.

Living in Los Angeles as I do, we are so reliant on the automobile.  It's heartbreaking to think about the Red Car Line that used to be a reliable mass transit system being destroyed by the petroleum titans.  Now we are waiting impatiently for a decent metro rail system to be built.  (I've ridden metro systems in Boston, NYC, Chicago, London, Paris, Tokyo -- what a dream!)  To think we once had a working system that was dismantled in favor of Big Oil.

And I loved Alfonso's nickname for oil:  "The devil’s excrement."  That sort of says it all right there, doesn't it?

Wonderful reading, thanks.